Bartimaeus

why'd you call the man "the prettiest princess", again?

I find it justice that the Redskins will miss the playoffs as a result of such a sorry showing...the same reason that I lost my fantasy playoffs. It's only fair.

Congratulations! Now pray you don't meet the Giants, seemingly your Achille's heel, in the playoffs. If the Packers win the North, I suppose it's likely that we'll host the Giants in the first round, isn't it? The Giants seem to always crush the Packers on their way to the Super Bowl...

Me too, actually: a friend recommended it to me, and I looked at the Steam store page, and I was like, "...But it looks so completely and utterly unappealing." I didn't try it until months after that...and had to come back and say, "O.K., you were right." But ultimately, it's probably not for everyone, so no biggie.

I very nearly had to commit ritual suicide live on youtube, so I understand and sympathize with your pain hey, at least we both won, right?

It starts off super slow and somewhat pedestrian, no doubt about it. The game starts ramping up some in the second major area, by which time I started enjoying myself more...then ramps up even more in the third area, and at this point I was really into it...and then even more as it continues...and then has probably has the best ending in a game I've ever played. It's just that beginning hump that I think really puts players off - I know friends I've recommended it to have had difficulty getting through the first act, but once they do, they've all finished it at blazing speeds and have loved it.

I actually *do* prefer music with vocals...it's just extremely difficult for me to find voices that I like, but when I do, I usually love them...sometimes totally independent of what they're singing or their music itself. Emiliana Torrini is, I think, the latest one I found whose voice I just love. "shoegazy fuzz" I don't even know what this means. Sounds made up.

Kate Bush was the closest thing to liking I got out of those three...and I didn't really like that, either. In regards to not being familiar with them, I don't really search out for a lot of music, and also I think I'm still pretty early into liking music, period. VNV Nation was the first thing I ever heard with vocals that I really liked...and that was only like five years ago (for a long time, I actually thought I just didn't like music with vocals period). Since then, it's been slowly branching out in random directions as they come along, so yeah, no surprise that I'm not really familiar with a lot of the "bigger" acts, especially with how crazy picky I am about voices. I just can't stand the vast majority of singers. Unrelated: the last thing I ever heard off of a certain site before it went down.

Undertale is my game of the year. Technically, it came out in 2015, but I played it this summer: nothing else gets even within striking distance for me.

volourn, once again, i am holding you personally responsible for the giants' performance today: please destroy the lions i will also be holding keyrock personally responsible for the cowboys today. if the cowboys lose to the buccaneers, it's off with your head and finally, i will ALSO be holding myself personally responsible for the packers today. if the packers lose to the freaking BEARS, i will be committing ritual suicide while livestreaming on youtube* thank you all for your efforts, let's go get 'em *not really well, maybe, actually

Dunkey had many of the same thoughts as you...even compares it to Metal Gear Solid 5, too. He had a slightly more positive impression of the game, though. (...Keep in mind that it's Dunkey, so you're gonna hear a few silly things if you bother to watch this review.)

I don't care for her voice (...or her music, if those two songs are any indication), but then again, I wasn't ever gonna say something silly like "she can't sing" in response to hearing it. Suffice to say, you're a much more musically diverse (...and knowledgeable) person than I am. Spinning circles around me with all the different name drops and such...the only two out of those I've listened to are Skippy Puppy and Front 242...and I don't count myself as a fan of either (about the only thing I like from Front 242 being Headhunter...everything else I ever tried from them just didn't really work for me). I'm so annoyingly picky about vocals: don't really like either of the two songs you linked because of it...even though I really liked the instrumental of the Coil song. Ack. Almost had a sort of Near Eastern vibe going...really liked it for the first few minutes. Ah, misophonia...

Undertale? :D (just kidding...mostly, since it's not really an RPG in the usual sense, and also because most people seem to have little to no interest in it due to its horrible, horrible fanbase and maybe it trying "too hard" in some respects, while not trying hard enough in others: still probably the best game I played this year, though)

Funny: it's generally (not always, but generally) the opposite for me. Classical, acoustic, movie and video game scores are my downers...most forms of electronic/synth, usually not.

Yes, copyright issues. I, uh, made VNV Nation really upset when I uploaded their latest album like 36 hours before its official release (...hey, it's not my fault stuff gets shipped early - O.K., it is actually my fault I uploaded it, though - funnily enough, it was probably the last "new" thing I ever planned on uploading, because I started uploading stuff on YouTube for the sake of having higher quality versions of songs...and for sharing rarer stuff, and by that time, a lot of other people were uploading new releases in higher quality, so why bother anymore with that sort of thing?), and I nearly got banned entirely just from that, and then after I waited out the copyright warnings (a year), I finally came back...and then immediately started getting targeted again, for videos that had been up for years. I'm not even sure if it was by VNV Nation themselves at that point - thanks to YouTube's wonderful copyright system, it could have been literally anyone. Had no choice but make everything private, and I will probably never return in any capacity until things change in that regard, which will probably be never. Used to have everything by VNV Nation, Assemblage 23, the Azoic, Lights of Euphoria (...up 'til a certain point: I asked them directly what they'd be O.K. with), and a few other miscellaneous, lesser-known and/or defunct acts. 600+ videos...forever hidden. I can't stand Standing. Lyrically speaking, it's O.K., but Ronan's voice was just sadly not made for it, in my opinion, .

Empires has a few of my favorite songs (Rubicon + Distant, Arclight, Legion), but it also has a few that I don't really like much at all (Kingdom, Standing, Saviour). My favorite three albums, of course, are Advance and Follow, Praise the Fallen, and Matter + Form...and in that order. I used to have everything they've ever done uploaded to YouTube, but alas, my channel may as well not exist anymore.

When he lost, I had a pretty strong negative reaction towards him giving his support to Clinton. But...as you just mentioned, he always said he would support the eventual nominee, because it would be better (...probably) than Trump, and at that point, there would be no other realistic alternative left available to him. I don't like the reality of the situation he (...and I) was stuck with, but I can hardly blame him for swallowing his pride and doing what he felt had to be done. It's also silly to direct any hard feelings at one of the small minority of people who actually tried to make a bad situation better, especially after they simply no longer had any meaningful say about the situation.

If you're looking at it from a consequentialist perspective in this situation, there was no action that would have reasonably lead to a good outcome here, so it hardly seems fair to judge someone that way. I could just as easily say you were morally lacking for voting for a candidate that you knew had no realistic possibility of success, that you were throwing your vote away...but I don't, because I also place moral weight into intentions, and I also recognize that, again, there was no good AND realistic choice here. I am pretty sure Sanders, as a seemingly moderately intelligent man, saw it much the same way after he lost...regardless of cheating. Why blame him or anybody else who didn't want to be in this situation for the lack of better options when we actually tried?

So, just to be clear...everyone who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, but who ended up voting for Hillary Clinton in the general election, is similarly morally lacking, yes? I just want to make sure that this is actually the implication here.

For Packers to win the division: Packers win out while Lions also lose to either the Giants or the Cowboys. Packers win 2/3 remaining games (must include @Lions) while the Lions lose out and while the Vikings win only 2/3 of their remaining games (even if one of their wins is over the Packers, this would not give them the division due to a three-way tie and three-way sweep and thus head-to-head being rendered useless for determining the division winner: Packers would take the division with a 4-2 divisional record vs. the Lions' and Vikings' inferior 3-3). For Packers to win a wild card: Packers must win out and Buccaneers must lose to the Cowboys. It gets a lot more complicated if the Lions beat both the Cowboys and the Giants (but not the Packers) and the Buccaneers also beat the Cowboys, but only a very extreme and highly implausible set of circumstances would make the Packers NOT go to the playoffs if they just win out. Basically, the Packers just need to win out in order to go to the playoffs, whether as a division champion or as a wild card. Division champion seems the more likely of the two, given that the Lions must beat both the Cowboys and Giants at their respective stadiums.

Sorry for your loss.

Well, I read it, because I was actually curious as to what he had to say, and I felt his message was basically, "Things obviously aren't perfect, but it hasn't been that long since things were really bad, and we've gotten a whole lot better since then, and hopefully that will continue." Is there an implication there that things aren't as good as he'd ideally want? Yes. But like how somebody can say that they wish they were in better economic (or whatever) straits while also recognizing that they're actually doing alright as it is and that they're going to be O.K. and things will probably even get better sometime soon, I don't think he's saying that America "[is] still a bunch of racists".

Did you even read the article you just linked?

Yeah, I suppose there was too much teenager...or uh, young adult at that point, actually...angst for it to really be called "lighthearted" or "fun".

Yes...nevertheless, I would struggle to call him the "main driving force" (I think that has to go to the community, who played it endlessly for a decade-plus, so much so that Valve eventually decided to develop it into its own game...even compared to other fantastic games, DotA is very unique for having retained such a massive playerbase...and even growing to ever larger proportions with the release of DotA 2 which is basically just a straight-up continuation of DotA anyways), and as for the "greatest competitive gaming developer" label...he didn't even develop the gameplay type (in fact, not even the original DotA developer did - these types of games were originally called Aeon of Strife clones for a reason, before they rebranded it to "MOBA" many, many years down the line). I'm not sure what it would take to get called the "best" in this area (especially since it's clearly so subjective), but I have to think these caveats make it a little bit of a stretch here: DotA (and MOBAs in general) still exist and are being developed and played for reasons beyond IceFrog's involvement in them. I'm sure he helped by making new versions for so long (even if a lot of them were only small changes), but...